Blog Post #1: An example of thinking geographically about environmental impacts

One impact of the plastic bag waste I thought was interesting and hadn't thought about before is that plastic bags are made up of oil. I never took the time to think about how they were actually made and only makes up 4% of the natural gas and oil, which is a small percentage amount but still is a lot of oil. Instead of creating more plastic bags, we should reuse them because plastic bags take years to break down, about 400 to 1,000 years. The United States estimates to throw out roughly 100 billion plastic bags. Companies and stores are changing their kind of plastic bags customers are receiving while shopping is a promising way the use of plastic bags could go down. Personally, we should handle the plastic bag waste by not producing anymore plastic bags but instead the plastic bag company should find a way to reuse the plastic bags that were already created. By doing that customers of the bags need to be responsible and throw them in the right garbage. On the other hand, the environment is full of plastic bags and a solution to fix that problem is to create a clean up program and groups to clean up our communities. The plastic bag waste is a combination of national, global, and local problem and needs everyone to do their part to clean up the Earth. From a manufacturer point of view, plastic bags are misunderstood, yes, they take longer to be broken down but customers use other types of plastics that harms the environment as well. In conclusion, once the environment starts to be cleaned up and people have to start to realize the causes certain things it has to the environment. https://www.vox.com/2014/10/4/6901299/plastic-bags-environment

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Blog 3: The environmental impacts of your meal

I recently made some tacos this past week for dinner. The ingredients I use when I make tacos is ground beef, taco seasoning, sour cream, lettuces, cheese, and sometimes black olives. Sour cream is made from light cream and contains no less than 19 percent milk fat. Sour cream is produced by adding a culture of Streptococcus lactic to pasteurized light cream and incubating at 72 degrees Fahrenheit until the desired flavor and thickness is reached. Tomatoes are commonly grow from seedlings started indoors that are later transplanted into the garden. They are planted indoors as early as 6 to 8 weeks before the average date of the last spring frost. Then they are transplanted into the garden 1 to 3 weeks after the last frost. Ground beef is processed meat, any meats that are not fresh. Processed meat has been modified from its natural state, either through salting, curing, fermentation, smoking, or other processes to enhance flavor or improve preservation. Since sour cream is made for...

Blog Post 4: Reflecting on the environmental geography

The process to process ground beef or just the production of meat has a negative impact to the environment for multiple of reasons. Deforestation for agriculture is in South America, but since raising meat takes large quantities of feed, the Midwest is losing its native prairies and grasslands for farming. Which leads to another negative impact of the environment, changing the fields to agriculture fields releases carbon pollution into the air. The production of meat affects climate change when the manure decomposes it releases emissions including methane, ammonia, and carbon dioxide into the environment. The crop fields are treated with toxic chemicals and fertilizers with a higher quantity than the farmers use on plants letting all the excess to go into the surrounding waterways. One action that can be taken at a global scale to reduce the environmental impact associated with the production of meat is to reduce enteric methane emissions. By using an enteric methane inhibitor tha...

Food Post

This past weekend I made a Doritos Taco Salad for a family gathering. In the salad there is ground beef, taco seasoning, lettuce, tomatoes, cheddar cheese, nacho cheese Doritos, and Catalina dressing. In the recipe I follow they put black beans in it as well but I do not include them. My family loves when I make it and is usually the first thing to go. First, you cook the meat then add the taco seasoning in. Then in a bowl you crunch up some Doritos and add all the ingredients in the bowl and mix everything together. This is a really easy recipe that everyone enjoys and a cheap snack as well. Below I have a link that is a recipe on how to make a Doritos Taco Salad. https://life-in-the-lofthouse.com/doritos-taco-salad/

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